I'm not denying that the argument is superficially compelling, but unless history is about to be turned on its head, it's most unlikely to work out that way.

There's quite a bit of this sort of analysis around at the moment, as you might expect in the midst of a very serious cyclical downturn which is being compounded by major structural change across a large number of industries.

Ford's way of looking at the problem falls into the same category of doom laden analysis that argues Western economies have reached the limits of their capacity to grow because the big productivity boosting technological breakthroughs of the past have run their course and there are no new ones coming up in the wings.

In fact, the advance of intelligent machines, or robotics, is one of the biggest reasons for thinking this latter theory is largely incorrect. In a world of ever increasing automation, productivity gain, and therefore economic growth, is limited only by the number of robots it is possible to produce. The greater the number of robots, the greater the output.

Now obviously it is the case that like all technological revolutions, this has profound employment implications. The robots have already gobbled up many of the jobs that used to exist in manufacturing, and they will be coming for your job in the service industries some time soon.

However, the history of past such revolutions is that ultimately they create rather than destroy employment. Who would have guessed, prior to the agrarian revolution, that freeing people from hard labour on the land would create boundless opportunities in manufacturing and in the cities? And surely nobody could have imagined at the height of the industrial revolution that millions would eventually be employed in mass communications.

Indeed, Ford acknowledges the point – as production becomes more efficient, prices get lower, leaving consumers with more money to spend on other things, which in turn creates its own demand for products yet undreamt of.

Ford's key observation is that automation is now proceeding at such a pace, and across such a range of different industries that "the basic mechanism for putting purchasing power in the hands of consumers will break down".

Imagine a fully automated economy. Virtually no one would have a job (or an income); machines would do everything. Long before we reached that point, mass-market business models would become unsustainable. Where would consumption come from? And, if it is still a market (rather than a planned) economy, why would production continue if there were no viable consumers to purchase the output?

Good point, but something of a case of reductio ad absurdum don't you think? This is the sci-fi world of Terminator and Skynet, where the machines takeover from the humans. As long as humans exist, there will always be demand for the human touch, and in any case, if the future of mass employment is in leisure, entertainment, and solving the mysteries of life, the universe and everything, then I for one can live with that.